by J. Gibson
“Aye.” Eclih tore another bite from the rabbit. “Nearly done.” He slid the chunk between his lips. “Dual-wielder of the Xarakan tradition. If he’s as fearsome as they say, I can see why the best work for him.”
Bhathric chuckled. “They’re never as fearsome as they say.”
“How did you come to meet Uldyr?” Eclih said. It occurred to Athenne that neither Eclih nor Bhathric had thus far asked about the origin of their kinship. “I’ve never seen him take to someone with such warmth.”
A heat spread from Athenne’s nose to her ears and chest. “It’s not that sort of thing.”
“Not starry-eyed?” Bhathric said with a measured softness.
“That night in the church served as my induction into the Saints, if I’ve had one. Uldyr has been a mentor to me. We were companions on the road from Reneris to the underlands of the Empire.”
“Did he tell you much of himself?” Eclih rolled a log in the pit with a poker from his satchel. The fire crackled and sent embers flying. “He’s never been much of a talker. You may know more of him than we do, save Aitrix.”
Aitrix. “Our personal conversations have been few, despite how long we’ve journeyed. The first time he spoke of his life before was the day the daggerhand attacked.” What should she know that I don’t? “Still, I consider him a true friend.” She probably does know things I don’t, with how he speaks of her—in admiration.
“Whatever the case,” Bhathric said, “Uldyr is a good man.”
Athenne looked down. “Beyond contention.”
A hush fell around them for a time, like the mist of a spring shower, clinging grey to the air and their skin. Finally, Eclih asked the inevitable question: “Why did you join us?”
Athenne’s eyes shifted up, aimed at him first and Bhathric after. Their expressions were curious, relaxed. Why did you join? “I suppose.” Her gaze lowered once more. “I suppose I needed purpose. Uldyr told me that I could help the Imperial people, that I would be useful. My learning had led me nowhere. I saw a world deserving of better, and awareness of it possessed me, yet I sat idle, doing nothing. The Saints have afforded me an opportunity. So, here I am.” She shrugged, unfolded her legs, and leaned back on her arms with her palms to the ground. “You?”
Eclih glanced over at Bhathric for an instant, then back to Athenne. The ends of his mouth spread into a closed smile. “Much the same.” His tone drifted from light to sympathetic.
When the meat cooked brown and black, front to rear and top to bottom, they removed the skewer from over the flames and divided it. To a few of her bites, Athenne added various nuts from her pouch. She had flesh of the legs and abdomen, sweet and tender, seared through. A trail of clear liquid escaped the corner of her lips and she brushed it away with the back of her hand. Never had she tasted anything so delicious. Every mouthful mollified the rumbling demon in her belly, until at last she had licked the creature’s bones clean.
Athenne washed her hands off in the river.
Eclih took the rabbit to discard it and clean the skewer.
“Mayhap we should sleep in rotation,” Bhathric said as she lay down next to the fire. “No one can get the drop on us if one of us is awake. Not as easily, anyway.”
Eclih slipped the meat skewer into the saddle-bag of Bhathric’s horse. “As the former abductee, I concur.” The upward quirk of his lips indicated the return of his jovial disposition. Athenne felt glad of it. “I’ll take first watch.”
“You’ve endured a great deal. Both of you. Now you’ve given me the only mat.” Athenne tossed a stone into the water. “Sleep. I’ll keep watch until near light, then catch a few hours to dawn.”
“You’re certain?” Bhathric rested her head on her bent arm.
Eclih lay down behind her, likely too tired to object.
“Yes,” Athenne said. “Sleep.”
Not long after, the pair had drifted off, their breathing regular. In her rest, Bhathric’s mouth had lifted slightly into a dreamsmile, her expression peaceful.
Athenne tended their fire on occasion and sat on her mat near the water’s edge.
The moons and the thin line of the rings reflected brightly in the black current. Fireflies frolicked over the river, fluttering and floating like tiny stars pulled from the sky. They were a foreboding, an omen of misfortune or ill fate. Totems of Kismet, set apart from the kinds of Sitix by their hypnotic mutant light.
That night, she thought of Ghora, of what they had seen in the temple. That flood.
The ichor that swallows the world.
It must be significant if Vekshia had shown it to them.
In her imagining, Athenne stood in the midst of it. Watching, helpless. The wave, miles high, roared toward them, drew them into its deathly red maw and consumed them living. She maintained doubts, but if Vekshia wished to aid in their success, then an importance attended their business, nasty as it was.
A pleased stomach, the warmth of the fire, and the tranquil night conspired to make her drowsy.
I must not fall asleep.
She removed her boots, rolled up her trousers, and draped her legs into the water. The water felt cold, too much so. She would not leave her legs submerged long, but enough of a duration to wake her up. Bhathric’s satchel had a cloth in it with which she could dry herself.
When Athenne finished risking her limbs to frostbite and had dried herself, she lay covered at the bank on her loaned mat. She longed to observe the stars performing their dance with the moons and the rings before the clouds enveloped them. Camping marked the best and worst part of travel.
The days and evenings were more pleasant when no one suffered capture, of course.
At its finest, travel permitted a time for one to appreciate the meekest of things. The murmur of running water, the trees crying in the wind. On most nights, a symphony of animals would sing their melodies throughout the woods, as far as one could hear. No such music had played since prior to their arrival at Ghora.
Their dinner hare had been the first animal to cross their path in some time, except the horses, and now the fireflies. The three of them were short on supplies, but if they rationed, they could make it to Aitrix at the Blasted Keep, situated as far south as one could travel through the sprawling Fausse Woods, at the cusp of Imperial territory.
Athenne turned over to her side, head on the ground, and listened to the sound of the water as it pulsed through on its course, reflecting like a looking glass in the light from above.
Something is coming.
She hoped they would be ready when it did.
CHAPTER XIV: DECLINE
Garron
“State your names for the record,” Archbishop Sangrey said as she looked up from the papers in front of her. “Abbisan first, Xarakan second.”
Garron watched from the side of the room. Next to him sat Scribe Officiate Amun Halleck, poised to transcribe every word of the inquisition.
“I am Kocia Arellano.” The woman on the left spoke with an alveolar trill, her bronze skin glowing in the light of the council chamber’s braziers.
The girl on the right named herself next: “Valhrenna Thrall.” Her defiant brown eyes raked Sangrey with icy disdain, her pointed chin tilted up.
“From where do you hail? Same order.”
“Khor Dohaid, Abbisad.”
“Xarakei, capital of the Xarakan Republic.”
“You are each members of the death cult, Mythos, devoted to the worship of the God of Death, Korvaras. You practice forbidden arts, including necromancy and plague sorcery. Do you confirm my accounting of these facts?”
“Aye,” they replied one after the other.
Sangrey gestured toward the Abbisan woman. “You are a priest of Mythos, are you not?”
“Aye.”
“And”—she indicated to the girl—“you are a witch?”
The girl nodded.
“Speak for the record,” Sangrey ordered.
The girl held her tongue.
An inquis
itor behind the Xarakan struck her across the thigh with the baton in her hand. “Speak.”
“Aye,” the girl said in an insouciant tone, seemingly determined not to whimper or express pain.
“How is it that a Xarakan national came to reside near the Imperial city of Imbredon? To our knowledge, Imperatrix Diomira has maintained the strict national border of the Xarakan Republic, as her foremothers. None may enter or leave. So, how did you?”
The girl glanced at the Abbisan, who shook her head once as if to give her permission.
“Look not at her,” Archbishop Umbra commanded. “Answer.”
“I was smuggled out,” the Xarakan girl said.
Sangrey leaned on the support of her chair. “By whom?”
“The one with me.”
“How did our inquisitors identify you as members of Mythos?”
Her arms shackled at her front, the Abbisan tugged down the center of her tunic, revealing a tattoo at the top of her chest. “Our members have tattoos of eight hands joined at the wrists behind a skull, within ringed circles denoting our rank by their number.”
“Most peculiar.” Archbishop Mortem’s blue eyes, colder than any frost, aimed squarely at the Mythosian priest. “Your kind are typically more content to die than divulge.”
Sangrey went on. “Seven ages ago, a number of Mythos cultists came into the city during Idoss, to Crescent Plaza. There, they unleashed plague spells. Flesh-eating flies, locusts, hail, boils, skin-consuming disease. Do you recall this event?”
“Aye,” said the Abbisan. “The Night of Thirteen.”
“Do you recall that, subsequent to this, affiliation with Mythos became punishable by death?”
“Oh, I recall.”
Three-hundred citizens died in that attack. Curses afflicted livestock for weeks near the capital, rotted them from the inside out. The hailstorm destroyed hundreds of homes. To Garron’s knowledge, no executions of Mythos reapers had occurred since that day. Most reapers were more careful than these two had been.
“How were you captured?”
Brow knitted, the Abbisan’s eyes flickered between Archbishop Sangrey and the inquisitors at the edges of the room. “Don’t you already know?”
The inquisitor who had struck the Xarakan earlier hit the Abbisan in the same place at the back of the thigh. “Answer,” she barked. The Abbisan flinched, her jaw visibly tightening.
“We were lodged at the Hall of Marquis north of Imbredon. Valhrenna left her wrist uncovered. The inn’s guard recognized her tattoo and sent word to your paladins. They rounded us up and brought us here.”
“Priest of Mythos. I’ll do you the small honor of employing your title, illegitimate though ‘tis.” Sangrey was in a more amiable mood than usual. “Are you aware of the happenings in the underlands?”
“Happenings?” The woman sounded curious. “I could not say.”
“Residents of the villages of Erlan and Ghora, along with those of smaller holdings, have vanished. Father Latimer, the man there, was guardian in the Vale.” She motioned at Garron. “An Undeath spreads across our southern territory. Bodies fall and rise again. One such reanimate claimed to be Vor-Kaal herself.”
The Abbisan laughed. “I’m afraid I’m of no help.”
“In time, you may reconsider,” said Umbra, with a tone that brooked no contention. “You might wonder why we have been willing to entertain you.” His humorless frown did not relent. “You shall have two weeks to confess what you know. If you offer valuable information, we’ll permit you to live out your days as prisoners here in the capital. Provide nothing, and we’ll hang you in the square.”
At last, the faces of the women betrayed expressions beyond apathy and resistance.
The lips and hands of the girl, in particular, shook.
“Gaze not so long,” Umbra continued. “Mythos cultists yearn for death, I’ve heard. You ought to be grateful to meet your Master sooner. If we were a less civilized people, I’d have you whipped through the streets. Consider it fortuitous that you have any alternative.” He turned his attention to the inquisitors behind the women. “We’ve no further use of them at present.”
The inquisitors seized the women, yanked them around, and marched them out of the chamber. There were a number of cells deep beneath the Priory for distinctive prisoners, no doubt the destination of these two.
Archbishop Mallum indicated to Amun Halleck that her record-keeping had found its need for the day. Amun gathered her equipment and exited by the same doors the women and inquisitors had gone through.
“They know more than they admit,” said Archbishop Crane.
“Of course.” Sangrey snuffed out a candle at her left. “And they’ll inform on none of it.”
Umbra moved to exit the chamber. “‘Tis of little consequence. They shall die, no matter.” The Vicar disappeared around the corner and the other members of the Ennead started to filter out.
Aramanth approached Garron as he rose from his seat. “Garron, I have matters to discuss with you.” She spoke in a low voice. “I’ll be over momentarily.”
“Certainly, Archbishop.”
Not long after he had returned to his chamber, a light knock came upon the door. Aramanth stood without, her hands in their habit folded at her front. He turned to allow her passage inside.
“How are you?” she asked. He appreciated that his well-being remained of concern to her. “Are you well?”
“Better.”
“Are you wanting of anything?”
He sat on the edge of his bed. “I have all I need.”
She closed the door behind her and took a seat at his bedside. “We’ll move to the business at hand, then. I’m sure you’ve better uses of your time than further tediums.”
He gave a thin smile. “I’ve much time.”
“Since we dispatched the company two weeks ago, there has been no word from the chevaliers or the bishops. We suspect them dead, but we cannot confirm it. We remain unable to scry in the region.” She crossed her legs. “Scouts have reported no trace of life beyond Abela and Arkala, save animals in the Arnlan Forest south of Imbredon. We’ve ordered that they venture no deeper. We expect that Ostland has succumbed as well.” A grim expression befell her. “We are considering evacuating the territories past the Black Canal.”
There were tens of thousands of Imperial citizens living south of the Black Canal. “Would not that cause great hardship in the north?” Not even Aros had the resources or space for an influx of refugees on such a grand scale.
“How long will the common body tolerate these events and our inaction before they rise up in blame of us? If everyone beyond this city vanishes into the air, as those of the Vale and Ghora, what have we left? The Empire is a sum of its parts. Without those constituting the share of its portions, we are a city, not a kingdom. The wars may be long over, but opportunism never ceases. When our rival nations sense weakness, they’ll strike.”
Garron gave her a long look, reflecting on what he might say. “Archbishop.” His throat narrowed. “Could it be that the restrictions on the Aether are contributing to this havoc? Our people endure limitation, but those whose magic is born of the favor of the other gods are not so inhibited. The reapers conjure their plagues. Druids continue their forest rituals. Many still practice their craft.”
Aramanth stared at him, unblinking. The softness that so often pervaded her features, as much a part of them as the bone that comprised them, no longer presented. “Nay.” She did not sound certain. “Warding began in the days of the Andesite, and nothing of the kind has ever transpired. Favored or not, the wards lessen all magic within the boundaries of our country, to the exclusion of our own. Even at their strongest, the high priests of Mythos could neither steal away whole villages nor compel you within the walls of the Priory. Whatever works here rises beyond the purview of the intent of our wards.” She was surely not certain. This was conjecture.
“As so, Archbishop.” The exchange dissatisfied him, but he did not
wish to press the issue further for the time. Cultivating a flicker of doubt, he hoped, might suffice.
Greaved footsteps approached from down the hall. A heavy tap came on the door. It was Garron’s chamber, but Aramanth had called the meeting. He glanced to her and she signaled that he should answer.
“You may enter.”
The door opened and an inquisitor appeared. “Archbishop,” she addressed them. “Father.”
“What is it?” Aramanth asked.
“Apologies for the intrusion. One of the prisoners has requested a meeting. The Abbisan.”
“Are we in the market of appeasing every whim of terrorists?” Aramanth spoke as if the idea of such a request, itself, was an insult. “The answer is nay.”
“She suggested that she has information which may be of value, Your Reverency.”
Aramanth sat a while, silent. “Very well.” She sighed. “Let’s see what she has to say.”
With the inquisitor at the helm of their trio, they walked from Garron’s room through the Priory, descending further into the structure. They came to a door at the end of a hall. The inquisitor swiped her badge over a rune adjacent to the door. An Overcross on the face of the rune glowed white and the door turned inward, revealing a looping stairwell, which they took down. The air felt dense and stifling, more so the lower they went.
Neither the moons nor the sun touched here. The walls featured no windows. Sparse torches across the corners gifted the space its sole illumination. Most of the cells were empty, but as they came to the barred cage at the back of a row, their prisoner moved into view, sat with her wrists and ankles bound by iron shackles. The other prisoner fell nowhere in sight.
They must have her elsewhere.
“I am Archbishop Delacroix. This is Father Latimer,” Aramanth announced as they stopped outside the container. The Abbisan’s head pivoted toward them with a rigid motion, like a pin turning in a rusted hinge. “If you have something of interest to present, this is your moment.”
“I’ve heard you may be reasoned with.” The woman’s voice sounded hoarse. “I needed him here because he’s seen what so few have.” She swallowed. “I’ve nothing to tell you that’d save my life, but I wanted to ask something of you.” Her chin trembled. She expended great effort to contain the waver of her words and the quaking of her knees. “Spare Valhrenna. She is young and foolish. She has harmed no one.” A tear glided down her cheek. If not for the faint light of a torch several feet away, it would not have been visible against her dark skin. “Please.”